Elizabeth Judge, in her recent essay “Kidnapped and Counterfeit Characters,” addresses the notion of literary characters moving from one literary vehicle to another, usually through appropriation. As Judge points out, at the beginning of the copyright era, proprietorship of characters was a rather nebulous affair: Did they belong to their authors, who did after all conceive them? Did they belong to the publisher, who could then published “unauthorized” sequels trading on the popularity of those characters? Or did they belong to the readers, who felt an emotional connection to the readers and argued, as Lady Bradshaigh did to Richardson, that they knew them as well as (or better than) their authors did? In keeping with the theme of the 2013 SHARP conference, “Geographies of the Book,” this panel invites submissions on the wanderings of literary characters from their home text into other texts, genres, or media.

Submissions ideally should focus on the question of ownership raised above, but are also invited to reflect on finding characters in unexpected places, the invocation of characters as tropes in other works, fan fiction, and copyright questions around the use of characters.

Abstracts (~250 words) should be sent in Word format to Erin Makulski Sandler
(erin.sandler@tufts.edu). Please include A/V requirements in your submission.

Deadline: October 31, 2012

cfp categories:

bibliography_and_history_of_the_book

eighteenth_century

interdisciplinary

popular_culture

twentieth_century_and_beyond

By web submission at 10/02/2012 - 17:02

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